He was a tall young man of twenty-five, thin from long suffering, and a little angular, and he was lame. He was not using a crutch now. Dr. Barbour had succeeded in alleviating the old trouble and Daniel could do very well with a walking-stick. But his face, pale and hollow-cheeked, showed the lines of old suffering, and to-day there were dark rings around his fine eyes. The fact was that, at that moment, his heart was beating so heavily that its clamor seemed to fill his ears. A strange thing had befallen him. He had been stricken with horror and anguish at an insult to one he loved, and--almost at the same instant--he had felt a wild, unreasoning relief. It would not do, he must not let his mind dwell upon it. The habit of repression, the habit of endurance, the older habit of suffering, came to his aid. He set his teeth and walked straight out of the front gate and down to the end of the street. Then he paused almost unconsciously, because this spot, at the side of a hill, gave him a wide view of the town, and he often stopped here a moment on his way to and from Judge Jessup’s office, just to catch this glimpse of his native hills. The poet in Daniel loved this view. The sun was on the hills to-day, except where the shadow of a passing cloud moved across the wide vista like a pillar of smoke to guide the wayfarers toward the Promised Land. The sun shone, too, on the roofs of the houses that clustered at Daniel’s feet, and it caught the gilt on a cross-crowned spire and flashed it against the background of the trees. The only vivid thing, it seemed, in the whole scene, where the gray of old shingled roofs and the sober tints of the time-worn houses blended with the greens and browns of nature. For it’s an old town, nestled in the hills, at the southern edge of one of the Middle States. A State, by the way, that is a good deal more southern than middle. So old is the town, indeed, that its tree-embowered streets have been trodden by the valiants of other days. The early settlers came here and found the spot fair, Indian traders bartered here, and heroes of the Revolution lie buried in the quaint old cemetery. The place has been long asleep, napping sweetly in the southern sunshine, drowsy and fragrant and restful--of a summer day. But lately the stirring of greater things has begun in the town. Life has grown busier, more noisy, more insistent. The ancient aristocracy has begun to feel the wave of democracy at its threshold, the old kernel is bursting and the strong young oak is thrusting its tap-root down into the rich black loam of the ages. But the background is unchanged, the fond heart can still dwell on the lovely profile of the blue hills, melting at noon into the more ineffable blue of the sky, and upon the dark green cloak of verdure that enfolds the foot-hills, and unrolls its ample edges to the very rim of the meadows.